Viera and Hrothgar Megathread

[tehneyrzomb]

Out of curiosity, has anyone played WoW? I know they have a number of different races, but I don't know how they handle headgear as I haven't played it. Or even ESO?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Out of curiosity, has anyone played WoW? I know they have a number of different races, but I don't know how they handle headgear as I haven't played it.

Not well, in some cases. Trolls' long faces and tusks, and tauren and worgen snouts, tend to either jut out weirdly from helmets, or just kinda disappear and hope you're not questioning it. Draenei and tauren horns and elves' and goblins' ears either clip through or disappear, depending on how they felt like designing a specific piece. It's not consistent.

[Renik]

Out of curiosity, has anyone played WoW? I know they have a number of different races, but I don't know how they handle headgear as I haven't played it. Or even ESO?

Not sure about ESO, but I heard it's not the kind of game you play for the looks or glams, it definitely wasn't when I played it many years ago, about WoW, they have very few armor models, the only variations are made on textures only that are stretched or shrunken depending on the race, some gear models don't fit well with certain beastly races. Even with all the limitations FFXIV handles gear design way better than those games, but at the cost of more design work, the problem here is that viera and hrothgar are very experimental races for the dev team.

[Yencat]

<snip>

I don't think they actually removed anything for Hrothgar, just shuffled them around.

Hrothgar has the same amount of options (or "tabs" if you will) as every race has in the character creator, the only big difference is they swapped fur patterns with hairstyles. So they can freely switch between fur patterns rather than hairstyles, like you said it's a bad decision but it might be more so due to how some hairstyles are tailored to certain faces rather than them having so many other options they had to remove hairstyles.

Viera heads are also really not that differently shaped to other races where it would be problematic for hairstyles;



vs.



the only difference immediately apparent is that Viera hairstyles have holes cut into them where the ears go (I assume so it makes a cleaner fit and you can't see a space between the hair and ears), they'd probably need to do that for other hairstyles as well and either raise or lower them slightly to connect cleanly with the ears.

They have also shown they have no problem with toggling Viera ears completely off where they deem it necessary for certain headgear so it just adds to the confusion of his answer, and why it's not a good idea to ask several questions rolled into one because we don't know what part he's answering.

EDIT: And Viera's "unique" customization feature is exactly the same as Elezen and Lalafell, the only difference is the shape and position, it's not a new thing.

[Renik]

snip

Thanks for the nightmare fuel... I see there's no apparent difference in the head shape, other than the placement of the eras and the gap between them and the head, this could lead to floaty ears on certain hairstyles and headgear, I still think he's talking about hair tho, but this line "We may not be able to get them to be exactly the same as the other playable races" could mean he is actually talking about both hair and gear.

On the other hand, this is personal opinion, but I would prefer the ears to not be removed when using certain headgear, unless it is a very tall hat that can fit them inside or something like that.

[Fukuro]

i like how the hyur female behind the miqo seems to be concerned as well by his look.

[Yencat]

Thanks for the nightmare fuel... I see there's no apparent difference in the head shape, other than the placement of the eras and the gap between them and the head, this could lead to floaty ears on certain hairstyles and headgear, I still think he's talking about hair tho, but this line "We may not be able to get them to be exactly the same as the other playable races" could mean he is actually talking about both hair and gear.

On the other hand, this is personal opinion, but I would prefer the ears to not be removed when using certain headgear, unless it is a very tall hat that can fit them inside or something like that.

Haha, sweet dreams

Yeah he could well be talking about both (and I hope he is, that's the best case scenario!) but it's just not clear. He originally said Viera at least would get some of the modern aesthetics but the selection would still be smaller than older races, which lines up with the "We may not be able to get them to be exactly the same as the other playable races", but the same thing could be said for headgear so

I'm personally not too invested in headgear (though I'd certainly like at least a few more that would easily make sense and still show the ears like the calfskin cap and bandanas) but if it's hide the ears and show certain headgear or keeping a majority of them invisible to maintain the ears... I'm gonna say hide the ears.

We still have the option of hiding the headgear if we don't like how it looks without ears, but we don't exactly get a say if they make the decision for us and throw a blanket invisibility on it.

[Fukuro]

the 14h broadcast is coming on july the 9nth.
let‘s see if anything gets mentioned there! \o/

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9b8e1b95bb0e50

[tehneyrzomb]

I don't think they actually removed anything for Hrothgar, just shuffled them around.

Hrothgar has the same amount of options (or "tabs" if you will) as every race has in the character creator, the only big difference is they swapped fur patterns with hairstyles. So they can freely switch between fur patterns rather than hairstyles, like you said it's a bad decision but it might be more so due to how some hairstyles are tailored to certain faces rather than them having so many other options they had to remove hairstyles.

Viera heads are also really not that differently shaped to other races where it would be problematic for hairstyles;



vs.



the only difference immediately apparent is that Viera hairstyles have holes cut into them where the ears go (I assume so it makes a cleaner fit and you can't see a space between the hair and ears), they'd probably need to do that for other hairstyles as well and either raise or lower them slightly to connect cleanly with the ears.

They have also shown they have no problem with toggling Viera ears completely off where they deem it necessary for certain headgear so it just adds to the confusion of his answer, and why it's not a good idea to ask several questions rolled into one because we don't know what part he's answering.

EDIT: And Viera's "unique" customization feature is exactly the same as Elezen and Lalafell, the only difference is the shape and position, it's not a new thing.

Well this is terrifying to look at ahaha. But yeah, I don't see how it would be difficult to give Vieras hats/hairs. I assume they could get the pieces to blend up to the ears? I mean, I don't know too much about graphic design, but I would think that might potentially be a workable solution.

Not well, in some cases. Trolls' long faces and tusks, and tauren and worgen snouts, tend to either jut out weirdly from helmets, or just kinda disappear and hope you're not questioning it. Draenei and tauren horns and elves' and goblins' ears either clip through or disappear, depending on how they felt like designing a specific piece. It's not consistent.

There are times Au'ra horns go completely missing tbf. Or Miqote ears for that matter. So I guess with the head shape being similar on Vieras, it begs the question why are they holding out on us? Hrothgar, I can see (sadly) just because of the beastly features.

[Yencat]

Well this is terrifying to look at ahaha. But yeah, I don't see how it would be difficult to give Vieras hats/hairs. I assume they could get the pieces to blend up to the ears? I mean, I don't know too much about graphic design, but I would think that might potentially be a workable solution.

Basically, yeah. These are the cut-outs Viera have in their own hairstyles, normally you can see the scalp through them but in this image the person has "plugged" them, where the ears slot into.

They could do this with more hairstyles and then lower or raise the hairstyle to fit into the holes, I can't speak for how easy or difficult it would be either but theory I assume that's how they'd go about it.



As far as hats go I don't think they actually need to cut holes in the hat, if the hat is flat enough the ears could just clip through and show on top, if it's a larger hat the ears can be hidden. Provided they make versions of the hairstyles we have that are cropped or flattened under the hat so the hair doesn't clip through.

But this is all mostly guesswork based on what other people have found from looking at the models with third party tools, there might be some other difficulties we don't know about.